Few delights can equal the presence of one we trust utterly
~ George McDonald
I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast towards You.
Nevertheless, I am continually with You; You hold my right hand. You guide me with Your counsel, and afterwards You will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. For behold, those who are far from You shall perish; You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to You. But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.
~ Asaph, in Psalm 73
Oh beloved, it is true. For those who have not realized the Presence, talk like this is but a folly. It is disregarded as some sort of magnetic resonance phenomena, or the ramblings of a man begging to find sanity.
And for those who have entered into this place available to all through the Great Author and Finisher of the faith that takes us there…. words fail.
The crushing overpressure and light of His glory.
The place of simply knowing – beyond doubt – that everything will always be OK. Forever.
The great joy of looking into the Face of One who Loved us fully before we even existed.
The One whose joy and power and Love and strength and goodness and friendship and reality and truth and clarity and peace and Life simply and totally overwhelms anything we thought we could have ever hoped for.
The moments of clarity that both, drive us to our knees, and lift us beyond time.
The times of vision where we see back upon this place and know that we will reign over time, and that four dimensions will simply be inadequate to properly represent our existence with Him.
The awe at watching fear and death and weakness and confusion and doubt and pain flee away from us, and at the same time, watching the in-pouring deluge of joy and Life and strength and surety and comfort that is the effulgence of who He is.
The knowing, really knowing, that we are now the intimate friend of the Creator of the universe.
The walking forward into life with absolutely no confusion or wondering what He wants us to do.
And then it gets better.
We come to know that He is with us even when we don’t feel a bit of the wonderful stuff He does indeed pour out on us.
We learn to stand in His grace when the fan is splattering refuse all over our faces.
We begin to care less and less about what anyone thinks of us – but Him. For He is now the One closest to us and the focus of our existence.
We are now more willing to rejoice in a test, than complain, because we are convinced that the very Person of G_d is going before us, He will not fail us, He will not forsake us and is already so sure about the outcome that we laugh at the thought of dismay.
We, even in our impending death, have come to realize that the worst of the old us is already dead. And the final breath in this body will only be the final release into the full dimensionality and communion of His Presence, which we already sense deep within our inner man.
While we have the sensation, abject fear is actually only a memory, which has been replaced with an assurance we don’t even need to explain.
We are, as a preacher once said, whole people fighting off sickness, we are no longer sick people trying to get well.
Can we see it? We have finally learned the truth that He is The Truth. He is now everything to us. There is no separation of our lives into special moments of intimacy with our Savior. And while, we most surely may have them, we are holy unto Him. So, whether the day is a lapis-blue-skied mystic paradise, or a knees-scraping-the-floor-in-prayer battle; or simply a day getting the groceries – we have come to understand that He is the very Source and Context and Substance of our life. We are now (as we have always been) utterly in the Presence of an ever-present and completely able G_d.
Oh beloved, you never have to be alone again. The only everlasting mistake you can make is to disbelieve the most true of all Truths. Yield to Him tonight. Simply allow Him to show you who He is. He will most certainly do just that.
